Domestic Space as a Factor of Fantasticity in Three 19th-Century Brazilian Short Stories

Abstract

Based on the assumption that the configuration of space constitutes an essential element of the fantastic, the article proposes an analysis of the short stories “Um sonho” (1838), by Justiniano José da Rocha, “O espelho” (1882), by Machado de Assis, and “O velho piano” (1894), by Afonso Celso, articulating the effect with the representation of domestic space. For this purpose, the concept of fantastic is delimited, based on the definitions formulated by Todorov (2017), Bèssiere (2012) and Roas (2014), on which the analyses are based. Drawing attention to the destabilization and questioning of reality, two ways of realizing the fantastic in nineteenth-century Brazilian literature are described. To support this interpretation, the narrative procedures that point to a paradigm from which a rupture in the logic of the empirical world is effected are highlighted, thus generating the fantastic effect.